7-Eleven owner appoints first foreign leader, announces share buyback to boost valuation

Seven & i Holdings announced a leadership change, along with plans to buy back shares and list its convenience store business, in a sweeping overhaul of the retail conglomerate aimed at boosting shareholder value.

The company’s current President and chief executive Ryuichi Isaka will be replaced by Stephen Dacus, a board member currently leading a special committee evaluating a proposed takeover by Canada’s Alimentation Couche-Tard, the company said in a statement on Thursday.

The company also said it will pursue an initial public offering of its 7-Eleven convenient store business in the US in the second half of 2026. Besides, it struck a deal to sell its superstore business for US$5.37 billion (HK$41.89 billion) to a unit of Bain Capital — making money available to fund a 2 trillion yen (HK$104.6 billion) share buyback. Seven & i will also divest its banking unit holdings.

Seven & i shares closed as much as 10 percent on Thursday, the most since November, before the announcements.

The buyback may help the company reverse a share decline this year. Before today, its shares had dropped 20 percent this year, piling pressure on the company to overhaul the business to increase shareholder value.

The overhaul comes as the Japanese retail conglomerate faces growing pressure to sharpen growth for its convenience store business on its own after a buyout plan led by the founding Ito family fell apart.

Seven & i had rebuffed an earlier, lower offer by the Canadian operator of Circle K stores, saying that it undervalued the company. But the Japanese company is yet to respond to Couche-Tard’s revised offer to pay US$18.19, or 2,777 yen, per share.

The company this week said it’s still “constructively engaging” with Couche-Tard on its buyout proposal, after the counter-offer led by the Ito family to take the company private failed due to funding issues.

The 64-year-old Dacus, who’s worked for decades in the Japanese retail industry and is a fluent Japanese speaker, will now oversee the talks with Couche-Tard.

The takeover approach had prompted the Japanese retailer to embark on a plan to split Ito-Yokado stores, supermarkets and retail outlets into a unit called York Holdings — something that investors including ValueAct Capital Management had urged for years.

Dacus will be the first non-Japanese CEO of the company and comes with experience of advising Japanese companies abroad. His retail career started at Mars Inc. in 1996 and became the CEO of its condiment unit MasterFood in 2001. Dacus later became a senior vice president of Japanese apparel giant Fast Retailing (6288) in 2005 and the head of Walmart Inc.’s Japan unit in 2011, currently Seiyu Holdings.

Bloomberg